R.A.N.T.
I find when boredom overcomes me I sometimes turn to one of my favourite pastimes...ranting. To start, I'd like to touch on the other side of expat life. It's not all sangria, beaches and perfectly sculpted social media updates. Social media updates that just have to let your 'friends' everywhere know how good your (new) life is. That's one of the main reasons I dislike social media, it's that it gives every Tom, Dick and Harry a chance to boast, gloat and fill the vacuum of previous unknowing with their pre-scripted drivel, usually crafted to create jealousy or resentment. It can get very old quite quickly.
The sense that you're still living in the 'normal world' is long gone, the sense of innocence I had growing up seems to be resigned to the history books. However, I am a massive hypocrite, I lose many hours of my weekend and weekdays furiously pouring over the many 'newsfeeds' of the modern forever connected world.
These days, it seems you have to be a certain body type, you have to like a certain music, you have to be tech and social media savvy, you have to like certain TV series, you have to like certain brands, politicians, beard shampoos etc. Sometimes it feels like we're all being dumbed down and groomed for everlasting conformity and banality.
Just look at how I contribute to this malaise-letting everyone know (whoever stumbles across my blog) my views on matters...who gives a shit. I used to enjoy growing up knowing that the media I was consuming was being retold to me, or at least, conveyed to me by professionals or trusted experts on any one given topic. Presently, any old sod with any sort of half-baked opinion is entrusted by news companies the world over to retell their version of events of breaking live news. It seems we're being flooded with opinions and points of views by people who really shouldn't have any sort of platform for public expression or exposure (see also - me).
I feel true genuine public opinion (whatever that is) is now buried under a constant fear of condemnation, a fear of upsetting the collective apple cart. You daren't say anything in case you upset anyone. The scope for expression, for true raw opinions, is narrowing by the day. The PC brigade jailhouses are overflowing.
Anyway, who cares? I'm not saying anything remotely original. Hey, let's have more Ian Brown in our lives.
The sense that you're still living in the 'normal world' is long gone, the sense of innocence I had growing up seems to be resigned to the history books. However, I am a massive hypocrite, I lose many hours of my weekend and weekdays furiously pouring over the many 'newsfeeds' of the modern forever connected world.
These days, it seems you have to be a certain body type, you have to like a certain music, you have to be tech and social media savvy, you have to like certain TV series, you have to like certain brands, politicians, beard shampoos etc. Sometimes it feels like we're all being dumbed down and groomed for everlasting conformity and banality.
Just look at how I contribute to this malaise-letting everyone know (whoever stumbles across my blog) my views on matters...who gives a shit. I used to enjoy growing up knowing that the media I was consuming was being retold to me, or at least, conveyed to me by professionals or trusted experts on any one given topic. Presently, any old sod with any sort of half-baked opinion is entrusted by news companies the world over to retell their version of events of breaking live news. It seems we're being flooded with opinions and points of views by people who really shouldn't have any sort of platform for public expression or exposure (see also - me).
I feel true genuine public opinion (whatever that is) is now buried under a constant fear of condemnation, a fear of upsetting the collective apple cart. You daren't say anything in case you upset anyone. The scope for expression, for true raw opinions, is narrowing by the day. The PC brigade jailhouses are overflowing.
Anyway, who cares? I'm not saying anything remotely original. Hey, let's have more Ian Brown in our lives.
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